Censored (Patient)
Definition
A patient is scored as censored if he or she did not suffer
the outcome of interest. In survival analysis, patients
who do not have an “ event” during a specified period
are said to have censored observation. A right-censoring
situation occurs when the terminal event is not
observed; instead, it is only known that this event is at
least later than a given point in time. Censored observations
can arise in three ways: 1) the patient is known to
be still alive when the trial analysis is carried out; 2) the patient was known to be alive at some past follow-up,
but the investigator has since lost trace of him; 3) the
patient has died of some cause totally unrelated to the
disease in the survival analysis.
Tags: observation, point in time, survival analysis, terminal event, three ways
